ent root of which makes Chinese curry.

When she emerged, she was an amazing and enchanting personage. She had
removed her gown, and wore a pareu of muslin, with huge scarlet leaves
upon white. She was tall and voluptuously formed, but she had made
the loin-cloth, two yards long and a yard wide, cover her in a manner
that was modest, though revealing. It was the art of her ancestors,
for this was the shape of their common garment of tapa, a native
cloth. With a knot or two she arranged the pareu so that it was like
a chemise, coming to a foot above her knees and covering her bosom.

Her black, glossy hair was loose and hung below her waist, and upon
it she had placed a wreath she had quickly made of small ferns. That
was their general custom, to adorn themselves when happy and at the
bath. The eyes of Fragrance of the Jasmine were very large, deep brown,
her skin a coppery-cinnamon, with a touch of red in the cheeks, and
her nose and mouth were large and well formed. Her teeth were as the
meat of the cocoanut, brilliant and strong. Her limbs were rounded,
soft, the flesh glowing with health and power. She was of that line
of Tahitian women who sent back the first European navigators, the
English, to rave about an island of Junos, the French to call Tahiti
La Nouvelle Cythere, the new isle of Venus.

I had but to tie up my own pareu of red calico with white leaves in
the manner Lovaina had shown me to have an imitation of our usual
swimming-trunks.

"Allons!" cried the princess, and running toward the waterfall, she
climbed up the cliff to a height of a dozen feet, and threw herself,
wreathed as she was, with a loud "Aue!" into the pool.

I followed her, and she dived and swam, brought up bottom, treaded
water, and led me in a dozen exercises and tricks of the expert
swimmer. The water was very cool, and ten minutes in it, with our
sharpening hunger, were enough delight. Fragrance of the Jasmine, as
she came dripping from water and lingered a few moments on the brink,
was a rapturous object. With unconscious grace she flung back her
head many times to shake the moisture from her thick hair, and ran
her fingers through it until the strands were fairly separated. The
pareu disclosed the rounded contour of her figure as if it were
painted upon her. She was one of those ancient Greek statues, those
semi-nudes on which the artists painted in vivid tints the blush of
youth, the hue of hair, and a shadow of a garment. She